The Philadelphia Inquirer, OPINION

Sunday, December 15, 1996

I have read with growing outrage the series on the campaign against the people of Tibet (``Inside Tibet: A Country Tortured,'' Dec. 8-11 and Dec. 15).

China has waged a systematic effort to eradicate the ancient population of Tibet and erase its traditional culture, which centers on one of the oldest forms of Buddhism in the world. At least twice in the past 40 years, there have been orchestrated massacres of Tibetans. At the same time, the Chinese rulers in Beijing are carrying on a wholesale purge aimed at any advocates of civil liberties in China itself. Yet, instead of acting against this wholesale contempt for human rights, the Clinton administration is seeking an ever greater share of the Chinese economic market for the United States.

For the second time in a decade, the United States is shamelessly putting the pursuit of wealth before any respect for common human decency.

In June 1989, the Chinese army crushed student demonstrators for democracy under its tanks in Tiananmen Square. Perhaps thousands were killed. And what was the response of President George Bush? After a decent interval, he sent a high-level delegation to Beijing to console the architects of that bloodbath that the outcry over it would not endanger U.S.-Chinese trade.

In the first half of this century, the United States twice sent millions of its sons (including my father) overseas to fight the forces of tyranny.

Many of them never returned home, their mortal remains now resting in thousands of graves across the ocean. Many of those who returned will bear the scars of their wartime experience until they, too, will die. Yet now, when faced with the greatest sustained campaign of human-rights abuse since the end of World War II, Washington cringes lest any criticism hurt our trade balance with the People's Republic. Those Americans who died for human rights in the two World Wars must be cringing in their honored graves.

The 20th century is coming to a close now, and historians will someday take a measure of our country's record in it. Which America will they remember? The one that selflessly sent its best and brightest to fight and die for human liberty or the one that sold human liberty away for 30 pieces of Chinese silver?

John F. Murphy Jr.

Drexel Hill